Transgender Day of Remembrance ( TDOR ) events across Chicago Nov. 20 honored the human beings who fell in the United States and worldwide— the honored dead in an undeclared war waged by society against their need to live free and true to themselves.
The International Transgender Day of Remembrance website listed almost 90 individuals from countries around the globe, detailing their names where possible ( with people as young as 13 ) and the horrific circumstances under which they died in the U.S.
In the United States alone in 2015, 22 names—mostly transgender women of color—became an enduring testament to serene beauty that overshadowed the ugliness of the country which denied each of them the life they lived, the liberty they deserved, the happiness they desired and then refused to recognize them even in death.
At the downtown campus of Columbia College, more than 200 people of all ages, races and genders and gender identities packed into a first floor room in an event organized by the Chicago-based Transformative Justice Law Project ( TJLP ).
It was an evening that was as somber as it was defiant and celebratory— the very definition of the words of John F. Kennedy who said in 1961 "conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."
The TJLP's Monica James and Owen Daniel-McCarter served as hosts for the event. Between performances by the Youth Empowerment Performance Project ( YEPP ), Eboni Watts, Caprice Carthans, Coco Mattel and Saanti Bonet Valentino; and a video featuring the names and faces of transgender individuals who died in the United States, including beloved and legendary Chicago advocates Joy Morris and Reina Valentino, there were moments of poignant silence and those when the audience was encouraged to loudly call out names and hug each other in solidarity with love and acceptance.
"We're not focused on their color, race or economic status," James said in referring to the fallen. "We're focused on the fact that they are trans and because they are trans, they belong to us. So tonight we're here to celebrate these resilient women in a way that brings light, attention, joy and also gives us the power to know just how beautiful and resilient we are in the midst of adversity."
"It's so important that we get together in large numbers and organize, strategize and envision ourselves taking our rightful place, our right to have jobs, housing, healthcare, love and dignity among all things," James added. "We can never get to that place if we do not continue to mobilize in unity together. Regardless of race, age, stereotypes, body types and images, it's about coming together and fighting for a cause that our lives matter."
"I am proud of being a transgender women, a woman of color and Cuban and it hurts me, every single day when I see violent crimes perpetrated against my sisters," The TransLatin@ Coalition's Maritxa Vidal said. "When they cannot get a professional or good job because people don't want them and I guarantee you some of my girls are smarter and more professional than many other people I know."
Vidal pledged that in 2016, the Coalition will travel to Washington, D.C., to take its message to lawmakers—one that will seek to decriminalize street economics in particular because it remains the only way many transgender people can feed themselves or put a roof over their heads.
"We are trying to take the bull by the horns," she said. "We're not asking for the extraordinary. We are just asking for justice, respect, recognition and the protection that we all as human beings deserve from our police department."
In her speech, activist Alexis Martinez referred to society's obsession with the gender binary as "a prison for us."
As an illustration of the consequences of that prison, Martinez named some of the U.S. teenagers who had lost their lives to suicide, including Leelah Alcorn, Blake Brockington, Melonie Rose, Cameron Langrell and Kyler Prescott.
"These are babies!" Martinez said. "I am frustrated that we don't understand the root causes. Nobody has the right to tell me that I can't go to church or a job. The social service organizations that collect all kinds of money from us, we need to make them responsible. They cannot continue to have big galas and celebrities in our name without us being a part of the process."
"We need to pay attention to the genocide that's going on inside the Black community," Martinez added. "Race permeates every [stratum] of our culture. We need to deconstruct these institutions that bind us all to these prisons."
Martinez was also a featured speaker at the Transgender Day of Remembrance held as part of the Out In The Open Sleep Out for Homeless Youth held at Cricket Hill on the same evening.
The snow falling as celebrated entertainer and singer Honey West took to the stage provided an ashen blanket while Martinez and Lambda Legal Community Educator Crispin Torres read the names and home countries of the transgender people taken in 2015.
They were preceded by a rousing speech from Chicago House Trans Life Center Connect to Care Coordinator and activist Channyn Lynn Parker.
It was one that offered hope and a challenge.
"The number 30 represents the number of trans identified women of Chicago throughout the city of Chicago who tonight are no longer homeless and are for the first time stably housed in apartments of their very own," Parker said. "This virulent global pandemic—indiscriminate of race and nationality which plagues an estimated one-in-five trans women in the US alone—known as homelessness has been eradicated from the lives of these 30 women who have now been given a fighting chance."
"Let us not forget those who are among us right now who are left to live," Parker added. "Speak for those who no longer have words but only their justifiable anger at having to survive in a world that places celebrity and sensationalism over authentic need. Stand in for them. Be the listener for their concerns and fears. Be the advocate for their change."
For more information about the International TDOR and for the names of the fallen, visit tdor.info .
